Tuesday, May 23, 2017

2016 Japanese film After the Storm (海よりもまだ深く) at Hollywood Theater, from June 16.



The 2016 Japanese film After the Storm (海よりもまだ深く) will play at the Hollywood Theater in Dormont from June 16. A summary from a March San Francisco Chronicle review:
Ryoto (Hiroshi Abe) has lost his mojo. Fifteen years earlier, his novel won a prestigious award, but he has yet to follow up on that success. He is divorced from Kyoko (Yoko Maki) and is behind on his child support — he is limited by the divorce settlement to visiting his son Shingo (Taiyo Yoshizawa) once a month.

He is also broke — probably because of the cost of the divorce and his gambling habit. With no follow-up novel in the works, he has taken a job with a private detective agency. As he gets the goods on his clients’ cheating significant others, he also examines his only life, which he is gradually realizing is a failure.

“I’m the ‘great talents bloom late’ kind,” Ryoto tells his mother, Yashiko (Kirin Kiki, who is excellent).

Not buying it for a second, Mom responds, “You’re taking too long to bloom.”

Unable to move on, Ryoto uses his private eye skills to spy on his ex-wife and her new boyfriend, who seems to be everything he is not — and a nice guy to boot. What could be a creepy sort of plot twist is, in Kore-eda’s hands, more of a sad desperation.

As with many of Kore-eda’s best films — “Maborosi” and “Still Walking,” among others — “After the Storm” has what the Japanese call mono no aware, which translates as “the pathos of things.” It is a film that is aware of the transient, impermanent nature of life.
Tickets and showtime information is not yet available. The theater is located at 1449 Potomac Ave. in Dormont (map), and is accessible by Pittsburgh's subway/LRT at a block south of Potomac Station.

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